The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1887-03-31
DRINK AND POVERTY,

the Great stumbling BLOCKS IN the way
Of solving the Labor Question.
1t is well known that the chief cause
of pauperism is drink. Returns made
for long series of years for Suffolk
County, which includes the city Of
Boston, show that eighty per cent. Of
the pauperism in that county is due to
intemperance. The Massachusetts
Board of State Charities, says that
eighty per cent. of all the pauperism in
the State is caused by drink. Senator
Blair says that from two-thirds to four
fifths of the inmates of the poor-houses
in the United States are sent there by
drink. There is no reason to doubt
that large percentage Of the poverty
which is not in the poor-house is due
to the same cause. Multitudes waste
enough of their earnings in drink to
keep them miserably poor, but not
quite enough to make them paupers.
George Frederick Parsons says in the
atlantic: Labor in the United States
is every year spending upon drink
which it does not need, and which
hurts it, fully e6OO,OOu, 900; a sum so
large that if even fifty per cent. of it
were saved a fund could be established
in two years which, under wise man.
| agement, would render destitution
among the poor of this country impos-
| sible forever after"
Labor agtators say that poverty is
more frequently the cause than the
effect of intemperance; that the poor
drink to relieve the exhaustion pro-
duced by too long days work, and to
drown the misery caused by the squalor
and want of underpaid toll, and the
despair of ever improving their condi-
ton. No doubt special misfortune,
protracted sickness, inability to get
steady employment or sufficient wages,
and loss of hope. have induced the
drink habit in some who, but for these
causes, would have remained sober
men; but for one such case there are
thousands in which the drink-habit is
the cause and not the effect of the des-
titution Of the poor. They drink. not
because they are poor, but because
they want to drink. Most of them
have an inherited appetite for drink,
and enjoy the rude fellowship which
the saloon affords. They generally be-
lieve, moreover. that moderate drink
ing is entirely harmless, if not bene-
fetal; and that only excess is injurious.
But moderate drinking, If it led to
nothing worse, the poor can not afford.
They need all they can earn to make
their homes attractive and comfortable,
and to provide for the future. The
five to twenty-five cents day spent by
wage-workers in moderate drinking"
makes all the difference between decent
poverty. with the necessaries and many
of the comforts Of life and some saving
for the future, and 'living from hand
to mouth" with scant supply of daily
needs, and a condition continually
growing worse. Facilis est descensus
averno. The descent of the poor man
in the daily habit of taking a social
glass, or two or three, with his fellows
to the hell of drunkenness, with all the
wretchedness of squalid home and
miserable, ill-clad. ill-fed wife and chill
dren. and utter hopelessness for the
| Autut . 10 CdSy oWlAO bilu dlulOoI CcIldlH
These victims of the saloon constitute
our discontented, turbulent, criminal
classes, who, while wasting their sub
stance in riotous living, blame society
for their poverty and are always ready
to make reprisals for their fancied
grievances. They clog all legitimate
labor movements, lower the rates of
wages, foment disturbance and dis
union in labor organizations, and are
to blame for about all the violence that
occurs in connection with strikes. The
drink traffic is the greatest enemy of
the poor, the cause of their poverty,
the hindrance to their progress.
1t may be true that the poor have
grievances which might be removed by
a better industrial system; that, as
compared with the employing class,
the great mass of wage-workers are
poor because they 10 not get a fair
share of the products OF their labor;
but their enforced poverty is not so
desperate as to afford any excuse for
their drink habits. Because they can
; not get all they want, or all they are
Justly entitled to, is no reason why
they should throw away what they
: have, in drink. With sobriety and in
dustry they may still be above want.
and have enough to support their fam.
lilies in comparative comfort; enough,
in this land Of free schools to give their
children an education and better
start in life than they have had. Pow
erty under such conditions has many
alleviations that make life desirable;
but poverty with drink means squalor.
want, despair and crime.-M W. Chris
tidn Advocate.